The Gentoo experiment

Podunk said:

<arnold>Gentoo iss fo getting you pumped uuuup!<arnold>

Well, that an for agonizing over which CFLAGS to use to make programs that already complete in milliseconds do so 3% faster.

My experiment with Gentoo is complete. As it so happens, a coworker got the same hardware that I did, at the same time. He installed Ubuntu 7.04. It turns out that the compile times, and some other benchmarks really were around 0.1% (if that at times) between the two different installs.

I know a learned a huge amount of information about how a Linux install works under the hood. Much props to any Linux distro that moves you through it painlessly. There was also some strange fascination that I derived in watching source get downloaded and compiled so effortlessly. Perhaps its that same feeling you got when you used to see a kernel compile; you're really not that smart- you didn't write the code after all, but compiling it sure feels cool- especially when the screen is dumping debug like there's no tomorrow.

But, back to the point- why is it that there's no real performance difference between an Ubuntu and a Gentoo- one compiled for my machine, and another based off pre-compiled binaries? Maybe that's the beauty of the operating system. Maybe I'm just an ass. I don't know.

I do know this- I like my Debain based distros, and I've switched back to one.

apt-get install happiness

Idiots

How can it be so difficult to legally buy a song online?

Here's the challenge- find a service to download a song. It has to be adhere to the following standards:

• Encoded in a standard format (no iTunes m4p), and works on a music player (xmms/vlc/banshee), so music should be a legit (read: standard) sound format


• Doesn't need an application to interface with the service. (Haven't we been using a browser to search/sort/browse/download fairly well?)


• Gives me the same flexibility as a CD would: I can back it up, rip to my computer, make copies for my use.

After a day or two of fruitless searching, I found a couple of candidates: mp3tunes, and maybe emusic. But, both seem to be indie-label oriented.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, and there really is an easy way to do what I want to do: get music legally without being encumbered by some third party software. At the moment, the only viable avenues I seem to have are:

• hit the P2P clouds and "acquire" my music


• buy a CD and be legal, but land up paying extra for tracks I don't want

I'm not going to hit the P2P could (I have a wife and dog to think about), but perhaps it answers why so many people do lean that way. I know I'd gladly pay a buck a song if I could get it on my terms- but alas, that seems impossible at the moment.

Perhaps the RIAA won't issue a license to someone that wants to provide music in a fairly open way. Perhaps no one has thought of that yet? Is it illegal? I don't know. Have you had better luck finding music online?